Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2
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Southern Italy in the eleventh century 111
of Monte S. Angelo, Andria and Giovenazzo. For a brief period Robert lost
control even of Bari, although when he appeared in person in northern Apulia
the revolt very quickly collapsed. In 1081, while Guiscard was fighting the
Byzantines on the other side of the Adriatic, there was a final rebellion, once
again led by Abelard and Herman, which forced the duke to return to Italy
early in 1082 and took nearly a year to suppress. By this stage he seems to have
been losing patience, and while generally merciful even to the ringleaders of
previous rebellions he now resorted to more drastic measures, including the
total destruction of Canne.
37
These continued difficulties all primarily involved Normans, and only to a
very limited extent the Lombard inhabitants of Apulia. Despite these problems,
and also despite their own mutual rivalry, the 1070s saw both Richard of Capua
and Robert Guiscard attempting to complete their dominions by absorbing
what was left of the other petty states of the west and centre of the region. Here
they were only partly successful. Amalfi acknowledged Robert’s rule in October
1073, not least to secure protection from the hostility of Gisulf of Salerno.
Salerno itself was conquered after a six-month siege in 1076, and in defiance of
unavailing papal censures. But Richard of Capua was unable to capture Naples,
despite naval help from Robert, nor was the latter able to capture Benevento
after the death of its last prince, who had been prudent enough to submit
his city to papal overlordship some years earlier, in 1077. The distractions in
Apulia hindered these efforts at the complete consolidation of Norman rule,
and Naples and Benevento remained bastions of independence, albeit isolated
ones, in Norman south Italy. In this very limited sense the Norman conquest
of southern Italy was incomplete, and the continued revolts against Guiscard
show how far the conquerors themselves were and remained disunited.
the normans and the papacy
The investitures of 1059 provided the formal, theoretical basis for the rule of
the dukes of Apulia and the princes of Capua. However, both Robert Guiscard
and Richard of Capua were already ruling, or were in the course of taking over,
their respective principalities before 1059, and their rule in practice depended
on their control over and recognition by their vassals and subjects. Malaterra,
for example, recorded that when Robert returned to Apulia from Calabria in the
autumn of 1060 he had to restore his authority there and ‘the Apulian leaders
accepted his ducal rule once again’.
38
Papal recognition added moral weight to
his rule and that of the prince of Capua, but that rule was not dependent on it;
37
Ibid., iv lines 528–9,p.232.
38
‘Apuliensesque principes, de novo ducatu accepto, sibi congaudentes’, Malaterra, ii.2,p.30.
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112 g. a. loud
nor did papal investiture prevent rebellion, as that faced by Richard of Capua
in 1063–5 and by Guiscard for much of his career: in 1067–8, 1072–3, again in
the late 1070s, when he lay under excommunication, and in 1081–3 when he
was the papacy’s most important ally. It became established that the Norman
rulers should swear fealty to, and be formally reinvested with their lands and
titles by, each new pope – and that each new duke or prince should do this.
But their status as papal vassals was not the basis for their rule. The princes of
Capua also took over the princely style and the inauguration rituals of their
Lombard predecessors, the collaudatio, formal crown-wearings and, perhaps
(the evidence here is scanty and difficult), anointing by the archbishop of
Capua to validate their rule. Soon after his capture of Capua in 1058 Prince
Richard visited Monte Cassino and ‘he was received in procession as a king’.
39
This occurred before he had received formal investiture from the pope.
The relationship between the Norman rulers and the papacy could at times
be very tense. Robert Guiscard was excommunicated by Gregory VII in 1073
and only absolved in 1080. Richard I of Capua was excommunicated in 1076,
to be absolved only when he lay dying in 1078, and his son Jordan was laid
under excommunication in 1079–80 and 1082–3.Ithas been argued that such
difficulties stemmed from two opposing concepts of the vassalic relationship
between the south Italian Normans and the papacy: the Normans considering
that their rule was held on a hereditary and essentially unconditional basis, and
the popes by contrast believing that these grants of investiture were conditional
and could be withdrawn, and need not necessarily be granted to the successor
of a dead ruler.
40
However, such a view is fundamentally mistaken. Certainly
the Norman rulers regarded their rule as hereditary and in no way the product
of papal investiture. The popes may well have attached greater importance
to the recognition of their overlordship, but there is no evidence that they
considered such grants other than hereditary. The Norman rulers might delay
their fealty to new popes (or new rulers to the existing pope) and the receipt
of investiture for some years. That Guiscard did not formally become Gregory
VII’s vassal until 1080, seven years after he had become pope, is explicable
because of their quarrel and Robert’s excommunication in 1073.Buthe may
not have received investiture from Gregory’s predecessor, Alexander II, until
1067, when the latter had been pope for some six years,
41
and his grandson
Duke William of Apulia did not receive investiture from Paschal II until three
years after his own accession in 1111. This strongly suggests that the function of
the formal ceremony renewing the investiture was declarative, not constitutive,
39
‘Il fu rechut o procession come roy’, Amatus, iv.13,p.191.See more generally the important discussion
by Hoffmann (1978), especially pp. 142–52, and on the princely scriptorium and style Loud (1981b),
pp. 106–7.
40
De
´
er (1972), passim.
41
Houben (1989), p. 127; Loud (2000), pp. 196, 208.
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Southern Italy in the eleventh century 113
and was viewed as such by both sides. Furthermore, although Robert Guiscard
lay under excommunication for seven years there was never any hint that
Gregory wished to depose him or to declare him suspended from office, as he
did to the German Emperor Henry IV. In 1073–4 Gregory proposed to lead
a military expedition to southern Italy but its aim, he stated, was to restore
peace and order to southern Italy. That achieved, the expedition would go on
to fight the Turks who were threatening the Byzantine empire.
42
In the event
the expedition collapsed, but Gregory continued to look for a reconciliation
with Robert, not to depose him. Nor did he ever support the Apulian nobles
rebelling against Guiscard.
The ‘feudal’ relationship between the Norman rulers and the pope was
in fact an alliance, given visible expression by the vassalic link and the for-
mal ceremonies of investiture, but not, it must be noted, homage which the
Norman rulers did not perform before 1120. The problems which that alliance
went through were caused, not by differing concepts of that vassalic link, but by
more practical and political reasons. No contemporary source states exactly why
Gregory VII excommunicated Duke Robert in 1073 after a proposed meeting at
Benevento had ended in confusion with the two never actually coming face-to-
face. But it seems very probable that this was caused by the continued territorial
incursions of the Normans. Men subject to Robert, and particularly his nephew,
Count Robert of Loritello, were penetrating into lands claimed by the papacy
in the Abruzzi; while the duke himself was threatening both Benevento, which
in August 1073 was formally handed over by its prince to papal rule, and the
remains of the principality of Salerno, whose prince, Gisulf II, had become
closely allied with the papacy. In subsequent years Gregory condemned these
incursions several times.
43
The excommunication of Richard of Capua in 1076
came when the prince abandoned his loyalty to Gregory, attacked the duchy of
Naples and aided Guiscard in his seizure of Salerno from Prince Gisulf. Jordan
was excommunicated for attacks on ecclesiastical property in 1079,andfor be-
coming the vassal of the excommunicate (and in papal eyes deposed) emperor,
Henry IV, in 1082.But in all these cases what the pope wanted was for the
Norman rulers to abandon their evil ways and observe the oaths they had sworn
to him and his predecessors. He never intended to attempt to deprive them
of their lands, even though these were technically papal fiefs. And after 1090,
when the authority of both the duke of Apulia and the prince of Capua suffered
serious setbacks, Urban II did his best to assist and strengthen their power.
If therefore we should treat the alleged importance of the vassalic relation-
ship with caution, we should also be careful not to attribute overtly political
42
Gregory VII, Register, i, 25, 46.
43
Ibid., ii, 52a, iv, 7,V,14a, vii, 14a. For Benevento, Vehse (1930–1), especially pp. 99–107.
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114 g. a. loud
motives to the popes. They did not, for example, seek deliberately to ‘divide
and rule’, to play off the principality of Capua against the duchy of Apulia,
44
or what was left of the Lombard principalities against the Normans. They
wanted peace and harmony in southern Italy, and this for three reasons. First,
there was their natural repugnance to bloodshed among Christians. Secondly,
with the reform party’s hold on Rome still far from secure, and relations with
the empire deteriorating until they broke down irretrievably in 1080, they
needed the political and military support of the Normans. Capuan troops in-
stalled Nicholas II in Rome in 1059 and Alexander II there in 1061, and Duke
Robert was to rescue Gregory VII from the imperialists in 1084.Thirdly, only
through good relations with the Norman rulers, and particularly the duke
of Apulia, could the popes push forward the reform and reorganization of
the south Italian church which was so clearly needed, and on which Leo IX
and Nicholas II had made only a start. The rivalry between Rome and Con-
stantinople over the previous century had left in Apulia and Calabria a mael-
strom of contending ecclesiastical claims, rival metropolitans and sometimes
chapters, autocephalous archbishoprics and ill-organized church provinces.
The effort to bring order to this confusion was to continue until the early years
of the twelfth century.
45
Furthermore, Duke Robert and his brother Roger
were restoring Christian rule to Sicily, an enterprise which the papacy had
sanctioned and approved. Robert’s reconciliation with the church in June 1080
at the synod of Ceprano can only have been a matter of profound relief to the
pope.
Yeteven after this the essentially pragmatic nature of the relationship re-
mained clear. Despite the pope’s desire for him to remain in Italy and protect
Rome against the imperialists, Duke Robert preferred to launch an invasion
of the Byzantine empire in 1081,toattempt to profit from what seemed to be
the terminal decline of that once-great power. When he returned to Italy he
lingered for more than a year suppressing rebellion in Apulia before marching
to aid Pope Gregory in 1084. The military aid of the south Italian Normans was
the aspect of the vassalic relationship which was most important to the pope,
not any theoretical rights over their territories; but how weak his position as
overlord had become was very apparent by the 1080s. After Gregory’s death
his successor was Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino (Victor III), the ally and
collaborator of the Normans, who was elected at Capua under the aegis of their
leaders, and whose return to Rome for his consecration was made possible by
Norman troops. By the 1080s the papacy needed the Normans more than they
needed it.
44
Cowdrey (1983), pp. 121–36, emphasizes this aspect too much, in what is otherwise a most valuable
book.
45
See Kamp (1977); Fonseca (1977); Houben (1989), pp. 121–35.
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Southern Italy in the eleventh century 115
the society of norman italy
By the death of Robert Guiscard in 1085 the conquest was effectively completed,
apart from ‘mopping-up operations’ in south-east Sicily. By that stage too
emigration from northern France to southern Italy had largely ceased. How
had that influx changed south Italian society?
First of all one needs to examine the validity of the label ‘Norman’, which has,
up to this point, been used for the sake of convenience. Were the newcomers to
southern Italy actually Normans? After all to an Italian ‘Norman’ or ‘northman’
might mean anyone from north of the Alps. As William of Apulia wrote, ‘they
are called Normans, that is men of the north (wind)’.
46
Is it significant that
William’s verse used the words Normanni, Galli and Francigeni interchangeably
to describe the newcomers?
In fact it is not. The literary nature of William’s work meant that the demands
of scansion were more important than terminological accuracy, and anyway the
Normans were French-speaking. By contrast both Amatus and Malaterra began
their histories by discussing very specifically the duchy of Normandy as the
source of the invaders. From documentary sources it has been calculated that
between two-thirds and three-quarters of the clearly non-indigenous persons
from southern Italy whose names are known from the eleventh and early twelfth
centuries were actually from the duchy of Normandy. Either these persons
had family names which can be traced back to somewhere in the duchy, or
they described themselves specifically as ‘Norman’ (as opposed to Bretons,
Flemings etc. who also appear in charters), or their names had a Scandinavian
element which can only be linked with the Scandinavian area of France, that is
Normandy.
47
Of course, this means that there was also a substantial minority
who came to Italy from other parts of France, a few from northern Italy and even
Germany. For example, the lords of S. Agata di Puglia from the 1080s, whom
Guiscard installed there instead of his errant nephew Abelard, and who became
hereditary ducal constables, were Bretons.
48
Count Roger of Sicily’s marriage to
Adelaide of Savona in the late 1080s (his third wife) led to the establishment of a
veritable colony of north Italians in eastern Sicily under the aegis of her brother
Count Henry of Paterno, who was, after the ruler, probably the most significant
lay landowner in Sicily in the early twelfth century. But the majority of the
incomers were genuinely Normans. Furthermore, most of the really important
mainland landowners were Normans, many of whom in Apulia were relatives
of the duke and in Capua of the prince. In the east of the principality the
counts of Caiazzo (who had displaced several former Lombard counts) were
46
‘Normanni dicuntur, id est homines boreales’, W. Apulia, i line 10,p.98.
47
M
´
enager (1975a). For wider aspects of this same problem, Loud (1981b).
48
M
´
enager (1975b), pp. 375–6, for references.
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116 g. a. loud
descended from a brother of Richard I, while the counts of Carinola in the
centre of the principality stemmed from his youngest son. In Sicily the lands
of Henry of Paterno were bordered by those of the lordship of Syracuse, held
first by Roger I’s bastard son Jordan and then by his nephew Tancred, and the
lordship (or perhaps county) of Ragusa, held by another of his sons, Godfrey.
49
Where important landowners were not Normans they might well not be other
Frenchmen, but indigenous survivors from the pre-Norman regime. In the
north of the principality of Capua the lands of Monte Cassino were bordered
by those of the Lombard counts of Aquino, who continued to hold their
property, if not their comital title, through to the thirteenth century.
50
In the
borderlands between the principality of Capua and the Abruzzi the dominant
family continued to be, as it had been in the tenth century, a dynasty of counts
of mixed Lombard–Frankish descent called the Burrells. In the Stilo region
of Calabria Greek landowners retained their property and importance. While
parts of the principality of Salerno fell into the hands of Norman families
such as the counts of the Principate, descended from Duke Robert’s younger
brother William, and the lords of S. Severino (whose forebear Turgisius proudly
described himself as Normannus ex normannis), several cadet branches of the
old princely family survived the fall of Gisulf II and retained their lands into
the twelfth century. Intermarriage was here a potent factor, above all that of
Sichelgaita, daughter of Guaimar IV, with Guiscard himself in 1058, but this
was only the most notable among several other examples.
51
The most salient feature of the Norman takeover of southern Italy was the
relatively small numbers of the invaders, never more than a few thousand at
the most. Furthermore, although many of the Apulian lordships were based
on towns, these were generally not among the most important. The major
urban centres of the south Italian mainland, notably Bari, Benevento, Salerno,
Amalfi, Naples and Capua, remained the more or less exclusive preserves of
the existing population. Apart from perhaps in coastal Apulia, Norman and
French landowners tended to reside on their properties outside the towns, not
just because of any possible aversion to or unfamiliarity with urban life, but also
because most of the important towns of southern Italy fell into Norman hands
relatively late, and in the case of Benevento and Naples not at all. Aversa, a
predominantly Norman town, was very much the exception, and that of course
had been in the hands of the newcomers since 1030 and was effectively a new
foundation (there may have been a village on the site already, but certainly
49
Tramontana (1977), pp. 216–21, and passim for landownership in Sicily under Roger I. See also Loud
(2000), pp. 173–9.
50
The most illustrious of its later members was St Thomas Aquinas.
51
See here Loud (1987), especially pp. 159–63, and (1996), pp. 329–32, and for the issue of continuity
in general, and for most of what follows here, von Falkenhausen (1977).
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Southern Italy in the eleventh century 117
no fortified town). Thus the impact of the Normans on the countryside was
stronger than on the towns. In some areas at least the rural population may
have suffered, and not just through the short-term impact of warfare, though
we should not underestimate the effect of the (largely man-made) Calabrian
famine of 1058, graphically described by Malaterra.
52
But, before the Normans,
Calabria had been a society of primarily free peasant cultivators. After the con-
quest the long lists of serfs donated to local monasteries by the new rulers are
very striking, as are the jarida (surveys of the servile population) detailing the
mainly Muslim peasants on Sicilian lordships. The condition of the rural pop-
ulation may well have worsened over much of southern Italy, but here too one
must make qualifications. Southern Italy was a rentier, not a demesne-based,
economy and serfdom was far more a matter of customary dues than labour
services. In those areas most advanced economically, such as the principality
of Capua and eastern Sicily, servile obligations as such were relatively rare (at
any rate in Sicily on Christian settlers, since the count wished to attract them).
Obligations would more frequently be tenurial (that is attached to the holding
as a species of rent) than personal.
53
Furthermore, the rudimentary infrastructure of the new governments
needed indigenous participation, not least because of the survival of a tra-
dition of lay literacy among Lombards, Greeks and Arabs which the Normans
did not possess. In Apulia many of the officials of the Norman counts remained
Lombards, Lombard officials were prominent in the entourage of the princes of
Capua, and one, and probably the most important, of Duke Robert’s ecclesias-
tical advisers, Archbishop Ursus of Bari, was a Lombard. The church was only
partially taken over. In the principality of Capua French bishops were installed
in the southern sees, near Capua itself, but those in the north of the principality
were largely filled from the ranks of the monks of Monte Cassino, a monastery
whose recruitment remained almost exclusively Lombard. If any part of the
church was dominated by ‘Normans’ it was the newly founded abbeys and
bishoprics of Sicily, although in fact the first bishop of Syracuse came from
Provence and that of Agrigento from Burgundy. But whereas Roger I set up
six Latin bishoprics in the island, and a seventh on Malta, as well as four Latin
abbeys, he also founded or endowed some seventeen Greek ones; a ratio which
reflected the demographic structure of the island, the Christian population of
which remained primarily Greek until well into the twelfth century.
54
52
Malaterra, i.27,pp.21–2.
53
Cf. ibid., iv.16,pp.95–6, describing Roger I’s attempts to encourage captives from Malta to stay
in Sicily by promising them freedom from servile exactions. See generally D’Alessandro (1987),
especially pp. 310–12.
54
White (1938), especially pp. 38–46; Scaduto (1947), chapter 3, especially pp. 69–70.For the first
bishops, Malaterra, iv.7,p.89.
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118 g. a. loud
The ecclesiastical patronage of the new rulers, and the very considerable
redistribution of property to churches which they carried out, also reflected
the limitations of the ‘Norman’ conquest. Those abbeys founded by the con-
querors profited, as Venosa and St Euphemia did from the patronage of Robert
Guiscard, and Mileto from Roger I. This was particularly apparent on the is-
land of Sicily where the monasteries of Lipari and Catania (the latter the seat of
a bishopric) were very generously endowed. But other churches which profited
just as much if not more from the conquerors were not Norman foundations.
Above all Monte Cassino benefited from Desiderius’s collaboration with the
conquerors, not only through his partnership with the princes of Capua, but
also by greatly extending its properties in Apulia. The patronage of Robert
Guiscard in his last years and of his son Roger Borsa played a significant part in
this, as did the pressure on laymen under the influence of the reform papacy to
surrender their proprietary churches. In the period 1038–1105 Monte Cassino
was given at least 150 such churches, profiting both from the Norman con-
querors and often from Lombards who hoped that under the abbey’s protection
they might safeguard at least some of their property from the invader.
55
But
Monte Cassino always remained a Lombard monastery. Very few of its monks
and none of its abbots were Normans. The same was true of the Holy Trinity,
Cava, which became the most important monastic house of the principality of
Salerno, and the chief recipient of the pious generosity of Dukes Roger Borsa
and William, as well as a considerable landowner in Apulia. In the latter area its
benefactors were almost entirely Norman, but the abbey itself remained one in
which the Lombard element predominated.
56
So too did St Sophia, Benevento,
which attracted considerable benefactions from the Norman nobility of
Molise, but which was itself in a city which was never subject to Norman
rule.
It has been argued that in Calabria there was a deliberate attempt if not to
‘Normanize’ at least to Latinize the area, by discrimination against the Greek
church and the conversion of Greek sees to Latin ones, and indeed that policy
resulted in the emigration of Calabrian Greeks back to Sicily.
57
However, such
conclusions have been disputed, and if there was a Latinization of Calabria it
was a very slow process, although several sees in northern and central Calabria
were converted to the Latin rite in the last years of the eleventh century. But the
churches (and the population) of southern Calabria remained Greek for a long
time to come, and there is little evidence for religious tension. There were still
Greek clergy in northern Calabrian dioceses with Latin bishops in the early
twelfth century, Norman barons patronized Greek monasteries, and Greek
and Latin prelates cooperated on important liturgical and legal occasions. If
55
Dormeier (1979), p. 56.
56
See Loud (1987).
57
M
´
enager (1958/9), passim.
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Southern Italy in the eleventh century 119
Greek religious observance went into decline it was far more a product of the
acculturation of the Greek population by the Latins over a couple of centuries
than of direct oppression.
58
If relations were at times still tense between the newcomers and the local
population, and above all with some of the Lombards, at the end of the century,
the reason was not the conquest as such, but rather the problems of government
and the breakdown of order in the years after the death of Robert Guiscard in
1085 and Jordan I of Capua in 1090.Roger Borsa faced a determined challenge
from his elder half-brother Bohemond, whose mother Robert had repudiated
before his marriage to Sichelgaita of Salerno; and he was unable to prevent him
from carving out his own independent principality in southern Apulia, based on
the city of Taranto. But in addition several other powerful Apulian nobles, who
had always been restive under Duke Robert, threw off the shackles of ducal rule,
ceased to mention the duke’s regnal years in the dating clauses of their charters
and set about aggrandizing their power bases. Pope Urban II’s proclamation of
the Truce of God at the councils of Melfi in 1089 and Troia in 1093 was the direct
consequence of this breakdown of central authority in Apulia. The townsmen
of Capua twice expelled the prince during the 1090s, and were only eventually
reduced to heel in 1098 by a full-scale siege conducted by the prince, the duke of
Apulia and Count Roger of Sicily. Whereas up to the 1090s Lombard officials
were prominent at the princely court, his charters issued from Aversa in that
decade reveal an exclusively French, and indeed almost exclusively Norman,
entourage. After 1090 too the Normans were expelled for a time from Gaeta
and the prince largely lost control of the northern part of his principality. But
by contrast in the principality of Salerno Roger Borsa’s rule remained stable,
not least because his descent via his mother from the old princely family gave
him legitimacy in the eyes of the Lombard population. While Duke Roger did
not entirely abandon Apulia, nor those parts of Calabria which his father had
retained in his own hands (rather than handing over to his brother Roger), his
activities concentrated more and more on Salerno and the west coast. Southern
Calabria and Sicily remained firmly in the hands of Count Roger, and not even
the fact that his death in 1101 was followed by a long minority disturbed the
equilibrium of his dominions.
If therefore the Norman conquest had brought stability to those areas which
were inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks and Muslims it was very far from
having done so in much of southern Italy, which in 1100 was as much if not
more fragmented than it had been a century earlier. It was to be a long and
bloody process before the entire region was united under the rule of Roger of
Sicily’s son.
58
Guillou (1963); Loud (1988).
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chapter 5
THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS
TO 1108
Constance Brittain Bouchard
the eleventh century in France was a period in which both political and
social structures were transformed. Much of the heritage of the tenth century
continued, from the assumption that Benedictine monasticism was the purest
form of the religious life to the very political units over which the territorial
princes of the eleventh century ruled. Yet old institutions were modified within
anew cultural matrix and entirely new institutions were formed. While the
changes were not sudden enough – or even synchronous enough – to speak of
the eleventh century as a ‘rupture’ in French history, the Carolingian heritage
was modified during the eleventh century until it was virtually unrecognizable.
In politics, although the form of governmental institutions remained ini-
tially unchanged, the Carolingian assumption that the king was at the top,
surrounded by his great fideles and bishops, was no longer automatic, regard-
less of how much reality it might or might not once have had. The narrowness
of the eleventh-century kings’ political domain, which had already shrunk un-
der the last French Carolingian kings and continued to shrink under the first
Capetians, points to a profound transformation of authority.
But the political weakness of the eleventh-century kings should not be seen
purely as a negative feature. Rather than saying that the collapse of royal power
made necessary new political and social structures, it would be better to say that
all aspects of society underwent significant transformations, and that the role
of the king was one of these aspects. The eleventh-century kings did not simply
lose power that the twelfth-century kings regained. The eleventh-century kings,
who actually had an advantage over the tenth-century Carolingians in that they
were never seriously challenged for the throne, lived in a period in which there
were far-reaching attempts to organize, create hierarchies and understand the
moral and social structures of the universe. These new forms of organization
involved many more people than had taken part in Carolingian politics. The
French kings had to find a place for themselves in a new political and social
120
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